Nu Alpha Omega

by H. Claire Taylor

  Dedication

  For Lori and Dave.

  18 A.G.C.

  Jessica had hoped that in graduating high school and moving out on her own, she’d also graduate from plastic-covered furniture. But as she plopped down on her extra-long twin mattress for the first time and felt the stiff crackle of fresh polyurethane underneath her, she knew it was one of the necessary evils of dorm life. Brand-new sheets would come later, but for now she was still surrounded by bags of unpacked Walmart essentials and Destinee and Rex were still lingering around in the tiny space—Destinee worrying her lip as she ran her hand over various surfaces, inspecting who knew what quality and continually finding it wanting and Rex gazing reverently around at the stock furnishings, misty-eyed.

  “Best days of my life,” he said, like Jessica was supposed to understand. But then he pulled back from his reverie and looked directly at her. “Now remember what I told you, Jess. It could be the best four years of your life or the best one year of your life. All depends on the decisions you make.”

  During down months between her final day at Mooremont High and move-in day at Texas State University, Rex had spent so much time at the McCloud home, eating almost every meal there and staying over every single night, that Jessica wasn’t sure if he technically lived there or not. At some point during those long, long, long days, Rex had apparently decided to step into the father roll (whether she liked it or not). But as far as Jess was concerned, there wasn’t much point to developing new habits this close to moving away, other than one: learning how to ignore Rex’s fatherly advice.

  “You’re here to learn,” he continued, leaning back against the rickety dresser. “You forget that, your grades slip, you party too hard, get …”

  Jess spared him saying the word. “Get pregnant?”

  Rex nodded.

  Destinee wrapped up her inspection of the body-length mirror and smacked Rex on the arm with the back of her hand. “Please. You think I’d raise a child who didn’t know how to use a damn condom?”

  Jessica sighed, wishing she had occasion to ever use a condom, mostly for Chris’s sake. They’d decided immediately and unanimously that no one else needed to know about their little sex problem, and when Jessica had returned home the morning after prom looking freshly manhandled, Destinee had practically thrown a party in her honor, assuming what any good parent would.

  “I mean,” Rex said cautiously, “there are other ways to get pregnant than sex.” He raised his brows significantly.

  Both Destinee and Jess narrowed their eyes at him. What exactly was he implying?

  “You mean immaculate conception?” Jess asked.

  Rex shrugged minutely, “It’s happened before, is all I’m saying …”

  Jess gagged. “You know he’s my dad, right? I mean you realize this, right? He’s not going to get me pregnant.”

  “And we already been over this,” Destinee added. “It wasn’t rape. I was beyond willing.”

  “You know,” Jess said, jumping in, “I really need to unpack and get settled in and check in with Chris.”

  “Right,” Destinee said, staying planted where she stood. “You know when the roommate is coming back? I’d like to meet her.”

  Jess shrugged. Half of the room had already been set up, the bed made, the walls decorated in a celebrity crush collage that Jess might have appreciated, could her gaze have done anything but home in on the stunning grin and hazel eyes of Jameson Fractal staring back at her from the center of the hodgepodge. The girl’s comforter had big yellow and pink flowers that felt like a congenial assault on Jessica’s retinas. In short, it seemed like her roommate was what everyone thought freshman girls should be.

  “You can meet her next time you visit,” Jess said. It would be a while till Destinee made the drive down to San Marcos again, but the suggestion that she would at some point in the future would suffice to get her moving out the door.

  Jessica rode the elevator back up after a quick good-bye to Destinee and a few more words of wisdom from Rex. (“Trashcan punch may sound like a good time, but it’s roofie central, got that?” Coincidentally, Jessica’s imagination couldn’t concoct a scenario where “trashcan” in the description of anything would make her want to put it in her mouth.)

  A strange feeling came over her as she ascended. It was unlike any she’d ever experienced. She tried to name it, and it wasn’t until the elevator doors opened and she stepped into the empty hallway that she realized what it was. She was unattached. Untethered. Separate. An individual. She held out her arms and looked at them. She was a separate entity from everything else. She could spend the day wandering through the woods and no one would be affected, no one would have to know. Her time was unaccounted for. She stood in the hallway, blinking for a solid thirty seconds before a vibration in her back pocket rattled her ass cheek and snapped her out of her revelation.

  It was Chris. She read the text. “Training running long. Won’t make it to lunch. Love you.”

  She headed toward her room as she texted him back not to worry and didn’t notice that another human being was occupying the space, sitting quietly with her hands folded in her lap, until Jessica had already made it back to her bed and flopped onto it with a crackle-swish.

  “Oh hi,” Jess said, smiling at her new roommate.

  “Jessica McCloud,” the girl breathed, her big round eyes open wide above a small turned up nose. “I’m Leslie. I’m your new roommate.” She jumped up and held out her hand.

  Shaking seemed a little formal for someone Jessica was sure to see naked and hear poop in the near future, but she didn’t want to be rude, so she shook.

  When Leslie returned to sitting on her bed, pulling her feet up underneath her butt, there was no sound of fresh plastic. “I just have to say, when I got the email about who my new roommate would be, and I saw your name, I almost didn’t believe it. I mean, I’d heard you were coming to Texas State, but I thought maybe I’d bump into you on campus once or twice and you wouldn’t know who I was. But now we’re roommates! And you already know my name.”

  Jess tried to remember Leslie’s last name from the email she’d received about her over the summer but couldn’t. Bucky? No, that wasn’t a last name. Why did she keep thinking it was Bucky, though? Maybe it was Bucky. Leslie Bucky? No one in their right mind would give a child that name.

  “Do you want to go get lunch?” Leslie continued, grinning. Then she froze as if she’d just remembered. “Oh, you probably already have plans.”

  Jessica had never been one to care much about hairstyles, but she had a sudden urge to braid Leslie’s hair. It wasn’t an urge born out of friendship or really anything positive. It was rooted in the fact that Leslie’s hair was the dullest shade of dark brown Jessica had ever seen (not that her own ash brown hair provided much to write home about) and was such a frizz ball, despite somehow also being thin, that it made Jess both uncomfortable and agitated to look at. Really? Your first day on campus and you don’t even bother to manage your hair?

  What was she asking? Oh right. “Yeah, I’m meeting up with my boyfriend for lunch in a bit,” she lied.

  Leslie grinned and nodded slowly. “Right. He’s here too. I bet y’all are happy you get to stay together.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You think you’ll get married?”

  “What?”

  Leslie gasped. “I’m so sorry! I’m prying! Oh my God I—” She gasped again and covered her mouth with a flap palm.

  Who the hell is this girl?

  “What is it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Leslie said, and it sounded like she meant it.

  “For what?”

  “For saying the … the G word.”

  Jess tried to think of a dirty word that sta
rted with G, but couldn’t come up with anything. Gook? That was supposed to be bad. But she was pretty sure Leslie hadn’t said gook. She shook her head vaguely.

  “G-O-D,” Leslie whispered.

  “Oh. God. That’s not a bad word, Leslie. He doesn’t care if you use his name.”

  Leslie shifted so her knees were pulled up to her chest. “So it’s true. He’s really … you’re His …”

  “Yep.” Jessica knew this would be a thing. She’d done her best to mentally prepare for it, too. A new city with all new people had its strong appeal, but it also meant conversations like this by the boatful. Leslie could prove good practice for those who weren’t as eager to hear what she had to say.

  “Wow. So you can speak to Him?”

  “Yep.”

  Leslie ducked her head down as she whispered, “Is He here right now?”

  “Yes and no,” Jess replied at full volume. “But there’s also no point in whispering.”

  “Ah, okay.” Leslie smiled placidly and nodded, though an unfocused look in her eyes hinted that she might not completely understand. “So you can really do all those miracles? The field goals and the resurrections—”

  “Yeah, but I don’t do either of those anymore.”

  “Right, right. I saw your tweets about it. But I mean”—she leaned forward—“do you still bring people back to life sometimes? You know, privately?”

  “No,” Jess said plainly. “I don’t do it publicly or privately. I thought that was pretty clear.”

  The girl shrugged. “Well sure, but you never know. I just thought I’d ask.”

  You and everyone else.

  She tried not to think about all tweets along the lines of:

  .@therealmccloud if u dont wanna tell every1 just DM me the truth

  .@therealmccloud: we all know u brought back jamaal lewis after that car accident quit playin

  .@therealmccloud: I DM u sumthin u gon like ;-) all 9in of it B=====D

  “Yep. Definitely gave up those miracles completely.”

  “Well, I guess you did go out with a bang. I mean, if you’re going to stop, you might as well make the last one count.”

  What was she …? Oh right. Jimmy’s faked resurrection in White Light Church. People thought she’d done that. And people thought she liked him. And people liked him.

  It was the last bit that boggled her mind the most. She understood people wanting to like Jimmy. Hell, she still wanted to like him. But wanting to like someone and actually being able to stomach a person weren’t always the same thing.

  “Are you sure you can’t get lunch?”

  Jess smiled apologetically. “I really can’t. I need to get some of this stuff in order before I meet up with Chris.”

  Leslie jumped up. “Can I help at all?”

  One task jumped to mind immediately, like it’d been spring loaded in Jessica’s subconscious waiting for the perfect moment to launch forward. “Yes. Could you do me a favor and just take down that photo of Jameson Fractal?”

  It was clearly not what the girl had been expecting, and the deviation caused her pause before a light went on behind her dulled eyes. “Oh. Oh! Yes. Yes, I’m so sorry. I’m an idiot. I should have known …”

  “No, no,” Jess assured her half-heartedly. “It’s fine.”

  Leslie hastily ripped his face off of her collage before turning back toward Jess. “Anyone else? Gavin? Garth? Paul? Liam?”

  Jessica scanned the collage more closely. She spotted another unwelcome face that wasn’t quite as carved into her psyche as Jameson’s but had to go for what she felt was an equally valid reason. “Is that Ross Hawthorn?” She only recognized him from the old, faded T-shirt Destinee still wore to bed on occasion with the singer’s likeness plastered across the front. Seeing her mother casually sport the face of the man who God had impersonated to knock her up left Jessica deeply disconcerted without fail. Avoiding those unwelcome encounters with that T-shirt had been one of the things she’d looked forward to when she moved away, actually. And now here he was again, grinning back at her, hot as ever, which Jessica found as uncomfortable as ever.

  Leslie scrunched up her nose. “Yeah. Is he not allowed either?”

  Jess shook her head. “No, he’s definitely not allowed.”

  Leslie reached up and grabbed the cutout of his face. “Can I ask why?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  She ripped Ross off the wall. “Okay, anything else?”

  “No, that’s all. Thanks Leslie. Let me know how the dining hall food is.” Giving the girl a job seemed like a good idea. Jessica knew it to be the best way to calm the nerves of domesticated dogs, and Leslie seemed closer to that than to a functioning human being.

  “Will do!” She grabbed her wallet, with her student ID proudly displayed behind a soft plastic window, and her key fob, with more keys and dangling keychains than any eighteen-year-old should need.

  Jess fell backward onto her undressed bed as soon as she was alone again and held her phone up above her face, pulling up her ongoing message with her best friend.

  She texted: Just met the new roommate. Call me when you can. You won’t believe it.

  She waited for a response, and after two minutes figured she could probably find a better use of her time than staring at the wall where the previous tenant had used a tack to poke holes in the shape of a stubby penis. The dick pointed diagonally up toward a smoke detector that hung out of its dock in the ceiling and beeped red, presumably to alert those who might see it that everything was just A-OK!

  It was too silent to set up her room. She was sure the quiet wouldn’t last long; she’d been told she was one of the only freshmen in her dorm, so once the sophomores and juniors moved in a couple dates later, she might miss the silence. But for now, it just took the amazing feeling of being on her own and put a sour spin on it.

  She pulled her remote from the clear plastic tub where she’d packed it away and plugged in the TV. The first channel was fuzz, so she scanned until she found the local stations. Without cable, there’d be no Animal Planet, but maybe that was for the best. She could avoid the temptation of staying in her room all day. A blurb for the evening news came on. It might not be a bad idea to get a feel for what happened in Central Texas. It couldn’t be any more boring than what happened in West Texas.

  “The governor’s race heats up as Texas Attorney General Grant investigates both candidates on charges of bribery, libel, and misappropriation of funds. More sunshine in the forecast this week, and beginning tonight, our six-part special: you trust the water you drink, clean your food with, and bathe your children in to be safe, but do you really know what you’re pouring over your skin and putting in your body? New shocking details about what’s in our water supply may have you considering alternatives to tap-water bathing. And lastly, we check in with our affiliate out of Odessa for a shocking update about Texas’s most well-known reverend.”

  A picture of Jimmy was only on the screen for half a second before Jess shut off the TV. She remained staring at the black set, though, letting this new information set in. Not the aquaphobia, but the more important bit: She was four hours from home, and it still wasn’t far enough away to forget about Jimmy. Reverend Dean mania wasn’t a localized sickness. That was unfortunate. Maybe she’d brought it with her to central Texas. Who was she kidding? Of course she did. She was patient zero in that regard. A Jimmy-shaped cloud hovered over her wherever she went, now that he’d so firmly established himself in the public eye as her caretaker and she his divine ward.

  A peach pit of loneliness that had been waiting dormant in her chest began to dissolve into her blood stream and spread throughout the rest of her. She supposed people made friends when they were lonely, but she’d never learned how to do that. All her relationships—both good and bad—had been forged as a result of the pressure-cooker of a tiny town she’d grown up in. Force two people to be in close proximity long enough and they bond in one way or another. But that wasn�
�t the set-up at a school with tens of thousands of students. The only person in close proximity would be Leslie, and Jessica hoped to avoid too much on the bonding front with that one.

  God? You there?

  Nothing.

  Well shit, she really was alone.

  She pulled out the old Dell laptop Destinee and Coach Rex had given to her the week before and started it up. She needed someone to talk to, and she already knew who it would be, who would listen to her woes, provide reassurance, and not overreact to Jessica’s complaints.

  She pulled up her email and began typing in the address dthomas@

  Her computer did the rest, and she moved to the subject line: Made it!

  She rolled her shoulders to release the tension, and then let herself be honest. Her former teacher would understand.

  It had been one of the longest evenings and nights of Jessica’s life, but she’d made it through, because what else was there to do?

  The next morning, Chris was already waiting by the front entrance of the dormitory when she and Leslie walked out. “Couldn’t get in,” he said.

  “No worries.” Jessica leaned forward and kissed him out of habit. He placed a large hand on the small of her back and pulled her close—she’d never get used to that; it’d probably always give her butterflies. When she pulled back, she realized they had a rapt audience. “Oh, this is Leslie. Leslie, this is Chris.”

  Chris flashed the girl the same smile he used to give to college recruiters he’d just met—confident yet friendly. He added in a little head nod just for good measure, and Jessica saw Leslie’s nostrils flare. No mistaking that signal.

  Well, she couldn’t blame the girl for wanting to bang Chris. And because she wasn’t all that worried about Chris going for someone like Leslie, she let the attraction slide right out of her brain as she grabbed Chris’s hand and he led her down the hill to Commons Dining Hall.

  Figuring out the new process of getting food drained much of Jessica’s energy aquifer that she’d hoped to save for orientation. A hearty breakfast of pancakes, Lucky Charms and Powerade put her back on her feet, though, and by the time they headed over to the student center, Jessica felt like she might actually be excited.